I’ve been on a journey since the start of 2025, digging deep to discover many things for the growth of my business. A big one being Who am I, really? This is the story of discovering my Core Values.
So – what are they, and how does knowing them help make a difference in what I’m here to do in the world?
Since the start of the year I’ve been working intensively with the awe-inspiring Customer Journey specialist, Amanda from Koogar. I knew I would work with her for a long time before I actually felt brave enough to say “I’m in!”.
Was it fear stopping me? A bit. Was it the amount of investment? In some respect, yes.
The truth is there’s often an underlying reason why we don’t do the very thing that will help catapult our growth.
Anyway – you’re not here to read about that today, but it does feel like a blog for another day.
Note to self, write blog about why we stop ourselves from taking the action we need’
As with a lot of the business development work I’ve done over the years (I’ve been self employed for 20 years this year) it doesn’t usually start with what seems the most obvious. And I’m absolutely loving this journey so far.
It’s everything I wanted to figure out, for the foundations of my business. Doing it in a way that feels congruent with the truth of who I am. This is a big deal.
Especially because, as it turns out, Integrity is one of my core values.
As a pure Manifesting Generator (that’s another post, what does that mean? Don’t worry about it for now…) I’m prone to ‘overcomplicating’ things. Ask me a question, you’ll often get an extremely long, not quite straight answer. Why go from ‘a’ straight to ‘z’ when you can stop off and visit all the other letters of the alphabet on the way?
What it can mean is there’s a colourful long list of distractions. I feel it makes life way more fun, but it can be tricky if you’re short on time. (And if you’re wondering, I don’t do that in client sessions – unless it helps to contextualise a relevant theme).
So when I was given the exercise ‘work on your values’ – there was a lot more to it to help me get into the nitty gritty.
I was given a list of 200 and something words. Wow.
I need to choose no more than 7 from this? And I love words too. Send helpl!
I chose a day when I was free to completely lose myself in the moment. It just so happens it was the anniversary of my son’s death. That’s a big part of the story of who I am today. Choosing that day deliberately. I knew it would make it all the more meaningful.
My initial ‘shortlist’ of values words was down to 70 something at the first try.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
It included words like Balance, Professionalism, Focus, Patience, Satisfaction.
Perhaps it’s interesting for you to know that some of these are significant themes in my Human Design chart.
How to narrow these down?
I began the next phase, choosing words that mean similar things. Even that proved challenging, but the overarching themes were:
An element of professionalism
Aspects of fun
Gentle themes of softness and love
Impactful words around growth.
And then there’s the other element – uniqueness.
When dwindling these words down to a shorter list, I still wanted way more than 7!
But I was going to do as Amanda suggested, I knew there was good reason for it – and have been reminding myself of each of the words I finally chose every single day.
Here they are – and also an explanation of why I chose them and they are meaningful to me.
Compassion
WIKIPEDIA: “Compassion is a social feeling that motivates people to go out of their way to relieve the physical, mental, or emotional pains of others and themselves. Compassion is sensitivity to the emotional aspects of the suffering of others. When based on notions such as fairness, justice, and interdependence, it may be considered partially rational in nature.”
I can’t help but care for people – especially when they’re hurting, or stuck. I’m an emotional empath so I feel the pain of other people. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m sobbing when you’re sobbing. But your emotions will impact me. It’s always been the way since I was very young.
Did I tell you that I was chosen by junior school teachers when I was only about 9 years old, to be a compassionate listening ear for a young lad in my school? He was petrified of being in a class with the teacher I’d struck a good rapport with. They called on me to reassure him. They knew my experience could help him see it wasn’t going to be all bad, that was probably just in his mind.
I absolutely 100% believe that who you were as a youngster, before life challenged and changed you, is a lot closer to the truth of who you were really born to be.
And so for me, with my empathic nature (yes, that’s in my Human Design chart too) this makes sense as a deep core value that runs through everything I do, and how I do it.
Other words also on my original list like this one are: Calm, Empathy, Grace, Friendship, Understanding
Resourceful
WIKTIONARY: “Capable or clever; able to put available resources to efficient or ingenious use; using materials at hand wisely or efficiently.”
Ohhh boy, am I resourceful! I am never able to see just one approach, I will always look to find different ways of approaching a challenge. Disappearing off to find relevant text material, googling to find how others may have tackled something. You name it.
It’s hardly ever the case that I will share something with the idea that ‘this is the answer’. And whenever that happened, I am also found questioning wither there might also be a different way to handle things. Maybe it’s been done differently elsewhere.
Clients of mine will tell you that during sessions, it’s often the case that I turn to my bookshelf, or look up some of the many resources shared with me during my training. The beauty of this as a growth pattern is that once upon a time I would have thought this meant I didn’t know enough.
These days I have a very different way of seeing my resourcefulness. It means I always have something else to bring to the table that I may not have accessed previously.
Other words that were also on my list like this one are: Generous, Knowledge, Experience
Joyful Optimism
Wikipedia: “Optimism is the attitude or mindset of expecting events to lead to particularly positive, favorable, desirable, and hopeful outcomes.
A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled with water to the halfway point: an optimist is said to see the glass as half full, while a pessimist sees the glass as half empty.”
Wiktionary: Joyful means “feeling or causing joy”.
I may have cheated a tiny bit here! Because I really wanted both of these words, but didn’t want to go into overkill, so combined them. For the longest time I’ve described myself as ‘A glass half full kinda girl’. It’s on the back cover of both my books.
So this makes a lot of sense within my values.
What this means about me is I can often help you find a new perspective that doesn’t dis-count your experience or any challenge you may be enduring.
It’s a way of looking at things that can take the edge off.
I’ll also say it’s one I’ve questioned since the recent introduction of the term ‘toxic positivity’.
Does it mean I present a case of that? Absolutely not.
I believe that there is always hope, even in the darkest of times. And I will find a compassionate and gentle way to help you find it. As you make your way through this time of transformation in your life, you need that to help you keep forward focused.
With decades of my own personal challenges overcome, I have the experience and the resilience to shine a light at the end of the tunnel for you. No matter what challenges you might be facing. And if you feel like hiding out in the tunnel a while longer, I’ll bring you a blanket to keep you warm.
It’s also interesting to note that the theme of ‘Joy’ (Gate 58) is one of the main 4 themes in my Incarnation cross. More about that another time.
Other words that were also on my list like this one are: Expressive, Playful, Fun
Creativity
Wikipedia: “Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable ideas or works using one’s imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physical object (e.g. an invention, dish or meal, piece of jewellery, costume, a painting).
Creativity may also describe the ability to find new solutions to problems, or new methods to accomplish a goal. Therefore, creativity enables people to solve problems in new ways.”
Ohhh now it gets fun! For some people, creativity means artsy, craftsy and you may be telling yourself a story that “you’re not creative”. I believe we all have it in us, in some form or other. It might just not look like you’re picturing.
For me, creativity is in my blood!
My mum would tell you she used to have to get me to learn to clean up all the trimmings and scraps of paper off the floor even when I was really young, from sticking and gluing.
I’m including a heap of different creative escapades here, including writing poetry, short stories, tie dying clothes, making jewellery, cross stitch, diamond painting…
And then of course the fact that I self-published 2 of my own books and my previous business was in one of the most creative there is – the wedding industry!
But going off the topic of sticking and gluing for a moment – being creative means you can approach things in many different ways (similarly as outlined in the resourceful part of this post).
It means you can find creative solutions. It means that words like ‘can’t’ become just a diversion, rather than a full stop.
What’s exciting for me here is that I’ve had SO many ideas of ways to bring this creativity into helping you embody the truest essence of who you are – yet again, that’s for another post, another day. Just watch this space!
Other words that were also on my list like this one are: Innovative, Originality, Unique.
Integrity
Wikipedia: “Integrity is the quality of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or earnestness of one’s actions.
Integrity can stand in opposition to hypocrisy. It regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that people who hold apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter those values.
The word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or complete. In this context, integrity is the inner sense of “wholeness” deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character.”
This one was really hard to pin down. I am absolutely someone who delivers and moves in integrity – and it’s been a big part of my transformative journey. Especially since my ‘old life’ (me 10 years ago or more) experienced a lot of time where it felt life wasn’t in integrity with what I felt worthy and deserving of. However, that didn’t mean I was deliberately operating out of integrity.
It was more that I wasn’t being completely honest with myself.
There’s a huge difference in seeing it that way as being out of integrity on purpose. I had so many other words I also wanted that felt the same as this, and the word ‘trustworthy’ was on the short list initially too. But I reasoned that when you’re in integrity, you know you can trust yourself, so it spoke to both.
Speaking of integrity – did you know that it takes more energy to be a version of yourself, than it does to simply just be who you are? This is how a lot of people can find themselves in burnout, by being so far away from their truth that they use all their energy in doing so.
Other words that were also on my list like this one are: Trustworthy, Honest, Realistic.
Fortitude
Wiktionary: “Mental or emotional strength that enables courage in the face of adversity.”
Ooh this one was the best discovery I have made in a long time. Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you I thrive in adversity, and in the toughest of times I have learnt a lot.
That I’m calm in a crisis (there were many times I had no choice but to be…). As such, I had so many words I could have chosen here.
I actually had to look this one up, even though I’d heard it before, I didn’t have any real idea what it meant. When I did, I felt the essence of it resonate throughout me.
This is me – As my previous coach Helena Holrick would say, if I were a stick of rock and you cut me open, this is the word you’d find running through me. Mmmhmmm!
I’m a tough cookie.
I’ve overcome many life affirming challenges.
Having faced my biggest fears head on, many times over.
As a result, I am extremely resilient.
I remember during one such challenge, I was sent a meme by my mum. It was a Chinese proverb that goes like this: “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills”.
I absolutely love this word and have been using it a lot more ever since.
Other words that were also on my list like this one are: Resilient, Sustainability, Inspiring, Empowered
You may notice after reading that I spoke about choosing 7 words – and there are (just about) only 6 words on this list. Another one which I hold very dear, and speaks to so much of what I am about (and yet again, an exceptionally strong theme in my chart – go here to read more about that) is the word ‘Alignment’.
I don’t necessarily consider this word to be a value, as such. But a way of life for me.
Redirecting my path over and over again – and helping others do the same. Always evaluating whether I’m on course – any tweaks needed? I make them.
I’d love to know if, after reading this you resonated with some of the values listed.
I love to hear from you, my readers, so why not pop something in the comments and share?
Go on – you know you want to.